The thing that has always struck me the most about former Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), now President Donald Trump's Secretary of State, has been the seriousness with which he approaches his job.
Unlike those who are more demonstrative, even boisterous, Rubio's steady hand, steely resolve, and soft-spoken but to-the-point words have always impressed me — even in the few times I've disagreed with his take on a given issue.
Rubio's resolve was evident on Wednesday as he announced the shuttering of the State Department’s controversial Global Engagement Center (GEC), which under the Biden administration faced heavy criticism from House Republicans who said it was used to censor Americans.
After the GEC was slammed by Republicans in Congress who alleged it pushed censorship of American citizens, the program ceased operations on Dec. 23 after congressional lawmakers refused to reauthorize it in spending legislation.
Yet, senior Republican staffers who reviewed the Biden administration’s plans in response to the closure of the GEC told the Washington Examiner in early January it appeared the controversial agency was merely “rebranding,” and that they feared the new office would continue the same censorship efforts the GEC had previously been accused of conducting.
This takes us to Rubio's Wednesday announcement (emphasis, mine):
Freedom of speech and expression have been a cornerstone of what it means to be an American citizen. For centuries, the United States served as a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world. Over the last decade though, individuals in America have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions.
That is not an America our Founding Fathers would recognize.
It is the responsibility of every government official to continuously work to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech. That is why today I am announcing the closure of the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI), formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving. This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America.
That ends today. Under the administration of President Trump, we will always work to protect the rights of the American people, and this is an important step in continuing to fulfill that commitment.
Boom.
Or, as political commentator Jonathan Turley put it: "Bravo, Mr. Secretary. Bravo."
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Turley also provided and analyzed a bit of background about the controversial agency, as well as claims made by the Biden administration about it.
We previously saw this dishonest practice in the Biden Administration when they claimed to shut down a censorship office only to shift work to other offices.
As we celebrated the demise of the infamous Disinformation Governing Board, the Biden administration never disclosed a larger censorship effort. That includes a recently disclosed back channel to Twitter where dozens of FBI agents tagged citizens for censorship. I have testified on that evidence of evasion and censorship.
The new move will remove 50 full-time staff positions at the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office.
The GEC was part of the Election Integrity Partnership, which we have also discussed as a consortium of nonprofits, social media platforms, and government agencies that were key to the censorship system.
The Biden Administration created censorship offices throughout the government while sending massive amounts of federal funding to groups and universities to help target individuals and groups.
As we know, the Biden administration also worked with social media giant Facebook. Although Meta Corp. (formerly Facebook Corp.) CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long contended that the previous administration pressured him and Facebook to censor conservative content that ran counter to the administration's various narratives, one thing remains clear: Team Biden, no doubt manipulating the cognitively-vacant Biden throughout his four miserable years in the White House, was hellbent on silencing conservative critics every step of the way.
Turley suggested that while it will likely take time to root out the Biden rot in the federal government, "there is reason to take heart" in the words of Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1942:
This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
May it not only be so; may America, under the leadership of Donald Trump and his tremendous team, bring an end to radicalism and the underhanded practices of today's Democrat Party.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But it's a beginning.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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